Who You Were Then I Am Today
by navigated
Summary: "Dumbed down and numbed by time and age, your dreams to catch the world, the cage." \8059\


_When at first I learned to speak. I used all my words to fight._

Pretending to be a nihilist was hard work. It was hard hiding behind an ideology that you didn't really subscribe to. It was something of a full time job. Being a pessimist was one thing, but being a nihilist on top of that was another thing entirely. Especially when you already had a full time job. Proclaiming yourself the right hand of a mafia boss at the age of 14 wasn't one of those things you just backed out of because you were feeling slightly overwhelmed, or some other bullshit excuse.

It was like he'd spend his whole life preparing for this one thing, this one and only thing that could ever define his life. It was like all those years of kicking nannies and flipping tables in tutoring sessions had only been to prepare himself for a bad attitude he'd need later in life.

And it wasn't as though he had many opportunities to grow into being an optimist or someone with something other than a piss poor attitude. A sister that made him ill just to see, a father who treated him with nothing but distain, it was easy to get bitter. So bitter in fact that a disdain that was just for a few certain people grew to be a vast generalization for the rest of the human population.

Rejection will do that to you.

Eventually words just started getting mixed up. Eventually your vocabulary becomes nothing but a constant stream of negativity and insults. Eventually you forget what its even like to hold a conversation with someone that isn't full of curses and threats. Worst part is you can't even reserve this mentality for the people who deserve it, it's just for everyone.

Even the people who give two shits about them.

It wasn't as though every "fuck you" was a veiled "I love you", in fact, probably all of the various "fuck you"s thrown around were genuine. The average individual took the prickly attitude as a cue to just back off, to leave him alone, to just accept that he's a terrible person and not worth getting used to.

Every awkward head scratch and half hearted laugh only made things worse.

It was a testament to how stupid Yamamoto Takeshi was. It was easy to pass off his behavior as simply having taken too many baseballs to the head, that he was an idiot with no social skills. That he couldn't catch a hint.

The harder thing to accept was that he had taken the hint, that he knew full well what the hint was and had chosen to ignore it. That he wasn't an idiot at all, and that he knew that his ingrained personality that Gokudera had learned over all of his years, was something of a front. That it was just easier to push everyone away because he didn't want to take the trouble to get to know them in return. Just waiting for more rejection.

Easier to reject them first.

The worst part of it all, was that fucking idiot Yamamoto Takeshi figured that out before he did. And that makes it worse, that makes the threats and the curses and the shoving more frequent. He doesn't need sympathy, he doesn't need a friend, he has a purpose. And that's all he needs. He doesn't need the fringe benefit of having a psudeo family, it doesn't replace the shit one he has, things don't work that way in real life. That's fairy tale bullshit that he doesn't want to subscribe to.

Not like the thought hadn't crossed his mind.

To accept that things weren't as bad as he made things seem, would mean he had to break down the personality he'd worked so long to establish. He'd have to unlearn all behaviors he'd forced himself to take on because he thought he needed to protect himself from something. He couldn't protect himself from the people he'd made a vow to protect; it was so convoluted that it made his head spin. It was one more thing he didn't want to think about, and the list was getting pretty long.

Yamamoto Takeshi was one of those things on that growing list. His stupid fucking grin and his unrelenting attempts at friendship were really pissing him off. Mostly because he had grown to like them, and maybe the rest of him too. And maybe it was his stupid dogged determination to not allow him to be the insensitive, disinterested asshole he once prided himself in being.

Didn't all together work, any cracks in that exterior that Yamamoto Takeshi had managed to create were only repaired two fold. He didn't want fairy tale bullshit, he didn't want to live happily ever after, he was in the mafia for god's sake, those things were impossible. Wasn't like he was missing out on anything.

Wasn't like he ever wanted the white picket fence life, wasn't like he wanted to fall in love. He told himself he never knew what love was (he was melodramatic, though that was not something he ever admitted himself to being) and he wasn't about to change that. He understood dedication, but that and love were two different things. But that stupid fucking word came out of that stupid fucking idiots stupid fucking mouth.

He ruined everything.

Its not like his world came crashing down, and it wasn't like his whole life was waiting for stupid fucking idiot Yamamoto Takeshi to let it slip to have some life changing moment, that would redefine everything he'd ever been. That was fairy tale bullshit.

But to be someone who had no hesitation to threaten death to someone, to put a knife to someone's throat, to burn down entire buildings, to say whatever foul and rude thing was on his mind, to find that words had left his vocabulary, that even if he wanted to, he couldn't return the sentiment. To find that three words had become hard to say:

_I._

And.

_Love._

And.

_You._


End file.
